


If you look, it's a long way down

by tracinginthesand



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Age Difference, Angst, Blow Jobs, Confusion, Gifts, Growing Up, Longing, Lust for the Iron Man Suit, M/M, MJ calls Peter a Sugar Baby, No actual Tony Stark in this fic, Peter has feelings about that, Semi-Public Sex, Teenagers, fantasies, feelings are hard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-12
Updated: 2017-07-12
Packaged: 2018-12-01 08:08:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11482206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tracinginthesand/pseuds/tracinginthesand
Summary: The first time MJ calls him Tony Stark’s sugar baby, he wants to crawl under his seat and die. It turns out Peter has feelings about that. They only torture him a little bit as he grows up. Then he meets Harry Osborn, and maybe that changes things. Maybe it doesn't.





	If you look, it's a long way down

**Author's Note:**

> I'm a shambles. I tagged this as Underage because Harry and Peter are both seventeen when they mess around, but there's no objectionable contact with Tony in this fic. Peter is having thoughts and feelings in his own head, as teenagers are wont to do.

The first time MJ calls him Tony Stark’s sugar baby, he wants to crawl under his seat and die.

“It’s not like that!”

“You have to be discreet about the arrangement. He gives you fancy clothes and tickets to things and presents, and in exchange you have to do what he wants in a vague and unspecified way, keep him updated on you, and drop everything if he wants you.” She has a point. Especially since they’re sitting in the second row of the orchestra waiting for Hamilton to start, courtesy of another brown paper bag left on his bed.

“He doesn’t expect anything from me like _that_.” Peter is offended and horrified on Mr. Stark’s behalf that it could be anything... untoward. They’ve hugged maybe twice! And Mr. Stark would never be interested in him like that, although does the framing of that thought mean that he, Peter, _would_ be interested in him? _Is_ he? MJ is talking again, and he pays attention to her despite the full-body confusion throbbing inside him.

“Honestly, if he was a creepy old man who wanted sex, I’d have less of a problem with it than how you’re supposed to risk your life being a vigilante to prove yourself to him or whatever it is.”

Peter stares. “You’d be okay with it if Mr. Stark wanted to have sex with me?”

“That’s what you’re taking away from this?” She snorts, and takes his hand as the lights go down. “You have it bad.”

The show is enough to make him stop thinking about this frankly terrifying conversation. Bless Lin-Manuel Miranda.

He doesn’t forget about it, though. He can’t. It’s like a switch thrown inside him, one of the old, big ones that makes a terrifying clunking noise right before Frankenstein’s monster comes to life. Except he’s the monster and the switch, all at once.

And he’s not doing it for Mr. Stark’s approval. Well, not completely. It’s true that the awkward, halting compliments he gets from him are a thousand times more potent than the best grade. They feel different from May’s unconditional love, from the way the people who love the Spider-Man act. Because Mr. Stark is praising the slice of him that is both Spider-Man and Peter Parker, the place where his abilities and his personality intersects. Like he’s understood for his limits and appreciated for his ambition.

Peter feels his body so keenly in the suit. Every twitch and change, every muscle. He can’t wear anything underneath it except boxers. It’s his bare skin again Mr. Stark’s creation. The next time he puts his suit on, he _feels_ it, how Mr. Stark made this for him, to his exact specifications, _because of him_. To cover every inch of him, to protect him, to contain him and enhance him until he’s something more. Better. But still himself. Has to be himself. _If you’re nothing without the suit, you shouldn’t have it_. But he’s not nothing. Peter knows that. Mr. Stark offered him a place on the Avengers. An apartment in his top secret facility. Where he’d be close. Where he could go with Mr. Stark. Protect him, maybe, for a change. Be close to him. Sit in his workshop and watch him work while reading a book would be enough.

So maybe he does have it bad. But not like _that_. And if he blushes sometimes when the packages show up--suit and gadgetry upgrades, a Stark Industries tablet with limited access to the Avengers mainframe and limitless access to Amazon’s Kindle library, a PS4, tickets to the opera for him and May, VIP access to movie premieres for him and MJ--that’s his business. Occasionally he’ll get a tacky _Wish you were here!_ postcard from somewhere around the world in Mr. Stark’s handwriting from a place suspiciously close to the latest place the Avengers were seen. It both makes him feel noticed and reminds him what he turned it down to finish school and be a kid for a while. Which is probably the point. The rush of regret-shame-pleasure is familiar where Mr. Stark is concerned. It makes him happy, makes his toes curl to be reminded of what he gave up. Peter suspects himself to be a fucked-up freak.

_Three years later..._

By the time he turns seventeen, Peter knows he's a fucked-up freak. His browser history attests to that. But he's not going to be a kid--at least, not technically--for much longer. He doesn’t know what he’s going to do next. If the offer to join the Avengers will materialize again. If Mr. Stark expects him to go to MIT. If he expects himself to go to MIT. He knows he has the grades for it, even if his extracurriculars are a little thin. He can’t put “is Spider-Man” on his resume. But maybe he should stay closer to home, where he can still put on his suit and do his job. Besides, maybe Mr. Stark will… but he’s trying not to count on anything. It’s been years now, since they had any kind of regular personal contact. Now, when MJ (best friend now, instead of girlfriend, still frequent beneficiary of Stark presents) calls him Sugar Baby, it’s a bruise she keeps poking at without realizing it hurts. The gifts and upgrades still appear, but the postcards have stopped. All contact is through Happy. Peter smiles and tries not to mind.

One afternoon, a pair of invitations to a “Young Members Party” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art arrives. MJ is busy, and he doesn’t really feel like talking to other people. So he goes himself, because he still goes where Mr. Stark wants him to go. Sometimes there are clues. Leads. Most of the time there’s free food. He dances for a while with rich kids in front of the Temple of Dendur. Another boy catches his eye, a lanky, dandy kind of boy with pale, brooding eyes. He introduces himself to Peter as Harry Osborn, and seems surprised and maybe a little relieved when Peter has no idea who that is. They dance, and talk, and after a while Harry drags Peter off into the museum so they can talk more quietly. Harry knows about art, and listens when Peter talks about engineering, and computers, and they trade information like their treasures as they slowly move closer together. The galleries are half-lit, even at night. Even when they’re empty. Time seems to have deserted the world in here. Harry can’t settle too long on any one thing, but Peter doesn’t mind following him around. Until they get to Arms & Armor, where the lights are off and the city night streams in through the high windows. The suits of armor seem alive. Peter has a hard time breathing, because he  _wants_ when he sees them.

He remembers being held in the arms of the Iron Man suit, cradled like something fragile and precious. Once Iron Man got him, he couldn’t struggle, what he wanted didn’t matter anymore. The time the suit’s helmet opened to reveal nothing inside but an angry voice, he felt like flinging himself back into the river. For bothering him. For trying so hard to do the right thing and failing, for distracting Mr. Stark from whatever other actually important things he was in the middle of, where he’d felt, only moments before, like he was walking on air for being important enough to rescue. He doesn’t really know how he feels now, except like crying. Because it’s been so long. He’s been Spider-Man for four years, and he’s good at it, and loves it, but there’s more. There’s a whole world more. He doesn’t know who he is in that whole other world. He has the urge to drop to his feet and press his forehead to the feet of the suit of armor. Maybe cool metal against his skin could remind him. He feels Harry’s eyes on his back and thinks being wanted could remind him, too. As Harry blows him, enthusiastically and precisely, he stares into the helmet slashes on a suit of armor and wishes they would light up.

He wants to hear the loud clunk of polished alloy or the click of a Gucci dress shoe on the stone floors, wants to be grabbed up and taken away. Into the sky or into a limo, he doesn’t care. He’ll be the squire to Iron Man’s knight, he’ll be the candy on Mr. Stark’s arm. He’d do anything, and he always would, and maybe that’s why Mr. Stark has disappeared from his life so utterly, because he _knows_ what Peter wants, because he’s uncomfortable, or ashamed of him, because he doesn’t feel the same way about a scrawny, spider-bit teenager, when he could--and does--have anyone. Turning eighteen in a few months isn't going to change that.

So he comes down Harry Osborn’s throat, and programs his number into his phone afterwards. Out of guilt, out of attraction, out of sheer loneliness, he can't tell.


End file.
